#and its a real interesting writing romance when you aren't used to it

[review-anon]

(but other then that she gets along with most of themon the ship so-)

Anywho other Aliza how are things in the voidship going? :D

*A tired and exhausted Xander goes back to Aliza's dorm room*

Hey Aliza, I'm baaccckkk!

Xander! There you are.

You were away for a lot longer then you said you where. I'm not worried since I know you can stand up for yourself but what kept you?

Did David start something again?

No. I ran into Kana, Chihiro and a different Hajime. They were busy trying to take trees down to set up as Christmas Trees and so I offered a helping hand.

We finished with it, I had to tell Chihiro to take a break a few times before an Anon placed him in time out, and now Kana is getting the penguins to deliver the trees to various areas in the Voidship so they can be decorated.

That sounds nice...do you know how many trees they used?

At first they were gonna use 9 but when we showed up, they decided on 10 trees, that's why it took so long.

I can imagine...getting 10 trees down is...myself...that's a lot.

Do you know who's doing the lights on the trees?

I...wouldn't know....right now I'm exhausted and I need to have a rest.

Hmmm....maybe I can do something regarding that. I am friendly with most of the people here, so there could be volunteers to help with fitting the lights.

*She kisses him on the cheek* Take some much needed rest Xander, I will go and see if there's anyone who can help. Love you.

*He blushes as he lies down in bed* Love you too.

[e-vay]

Hi! If you have the time, could tell me a little about Love and Deep Space? I originally played a ton of Dress Up! Time Princess, as obsessed, and even occasionally threw a little money at it, but ditched it once the UI became too cluttered, they added a ton of things that used up massive resources, and almost all events were P2W. I keep eying LaDS but am worried it might have the same issue? Also, does it have a lot of customization/personalization options? That'd be a big selling point for me.

Oh my gosh, where do I even start! Listen I'm not a saleswoman but I'll do my best to explain. I'll put it below the cut so that people who aren't interested don't have to read. Oh and also (not that you are, but I just want to make this clear for everyone) Love and Deepspace is NOT a game for children. So don't download it for your kids lol

I haven't played any other game like LADS before so I don't know what to compare it to. It is just this very rare game that happens to check every single box of all my niches! It's a romance, it's a sci-fi/fantasy, it's got action and fighting as well as really cute mini games, its got steamy audio stories that'll make ya go WOOF, the writing is superb and the animations are STUNNING!!!! I am not kidding when I tell you the story is so well written; it makes me cry, it makes me laugh, it makes me sweat 🥵 (in a good way haha), the writers really know what they’re doing! Here are just some samples of the different things you can do in the game:

RPG Battles - Multiple fighting styles, including your choice between guns, sword, wand/staff and claymore.

Main Story - This includes written stories, animated cutscenes, character interactions and battles.

Special Events - Variations of the above ^ But limited to a small window of time so you can only participate and get rare items during that window

Lottery ("Wishes") - This is how you obtain 'memories' which you use for battling. Think of them like Pokemon cards. Some of them are extra special and will unlock dates/stories/animations for you to enjoy.

"Date Minigames" - These are cutesy things to do with your love interest like playing cards or claw machine. You can even choose whether you play the claw machine or your date does (hint: some of the guys are good at some of the machines, while others are not)

Photobooth - You can take cutesy snapshots with stock poses or you use the studio mode and make a lot of adjustments to capture the scene you want. They also have an AR mode where YOU can take a photo with him, haha!

Interact with your love interest(s) - The stronger your affinity with him, the more you can do together. This ranges from cute, animated interactions to having "conversations" with him. He'll also text and call you. You can romance all of the love interests if you want and it doesn't negatively impact your affinity with the others.

Audio stories - These are steamy vignettes starring you and your love interest. This one is for all the “Booktok girlies”!!! 🥵 Listen with headphones! 🙈

Anecdotes and other Side stories - The lore in this game is ENDLESS! If you enjoy reading, there are plenty of written stories within the game. If you don't like it, you can just skip through it to gain your reward and move on.

Dress up (limited) - As you play you'll earn different outfits, but there are also outfits you can buy. You can use real currency or in-game currency, it just depends on the outfit. You can't completely create your own ensemble but you can pair different outfits with different accessories to use in the photobooth. You can also decide what your love interest(s) wear or have him decide what he wants to wear.

LADS is free to play and doesn't have any ads. However, if you're prone to FOMO, you'll have better luck receiving items during their special events if you do make purchases. But again, you absolutely do not have to spend any money on it to play.

There is a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to the navigation of the game because there is so much to do within it, but you get the hang of it really fast. I feel like the UI is actually quite clean and organized. I’ve put a screenshot below:

The most confusing thing is the story mode; it kind of jumps around out of order because characters were added after the game's story had already started. But I personally didn't find that a dealbreaker and you can go back into the story and replay it in order any time.

The amount of storage the game will take up on your phone/tablet is a lot, but that's because the game is GORGEOUS. All the characters are fully rendered in 3D and the animations will blow your mind. I can't tell you how many times I'm playing it and I can't believe it's a mobile game. I play on "medium" resolution so my phone doesn't explode on me, but even then the quality is so good.

Customization is where the game unfortunately falls short. Though you do get to customize your protagonist, there are limitations. You can change her face, makeup, hair and voice, but during in-game fighting, dialog and cutscenes, MC will always default to a woman with long dark hair. Some players have found ways to glitch the game so that your customizations like hair style and color will appear in the “kindled” animations (you’ll know what that means when you play it), but it's not a long-term solution. We're all crossing our fingers that they'll update the game one day so the animations reflect our choices better!

There are other customizations in-game that are fun. You have a banner that you can change the appearance of and change your title. As you build a stronger connection with each of the guys, you can have them call you by unique nicknames and they'll refer to you as that moving forward (though you can change it every day). There are also elements of the game that involve you sending and receiving text messages, phone calls, and social media posts and you can customize how those look to an extent as well.

As far as the unique experience you have as a protagonist, when it comes to dialog/action choices there are only so many options you can choose from. The writers have an overall plan for MC so sometimes she'll say things that I would never want her to say, but I didn't write her so 🤷‍♀️ We still get more control than some games offer so I can't complain!

Personally, I do wish it was a little more inclusive than some other games out there. Right now you can only play as a woman and you can only romance the male characters. But that's what other games are for, I guess.

I don't know if this game will be your cup of tea and I know for a fact it's not for everyone, but DANG if this game wasn't made for me in every way! If you do end up playing it, I hope you enjoy it! And you can add me! My hunter’s number is: 82001322820

[always---wrong]

Okay, so I wanted to discuss the situation with Alastor, his canonical sexuality, and fans.

I have seen the two sides alot.

So one side ships Al with numerous characters and sees this as casual fun.

And the other thinks this is disrespectful cause he is ace, or Aroace.

(I believe that he is Aroace. His va said so, his character has shown no interest in romance, and Viv may have confirmed it at some point)

Now, I am sex repulsed ace and I'm aro. And I have strong opinions. Alastor is my favorite character in Hazbin Hotel, he is also the FIRST confirmed ace character I've seen. (This doesn't include subtly implied characters) Because Al is the first and I care for him he is very important to me.

My opinion is really mixed because on one side it's; yeah, it is a fandom, and fandoms ship. It's what they do. Its also kind a rude to judge someone for their favorite pairings and stuff, in my opinion.

On the other side though I'm hurt. I am a queer person with basically no rep. And I hadn't realized how upset I was by this until I saw discourse over this character. I had FORGOTTEN that it was possible to have confirmed canonical ace characters. I had gotten so used to that just being a head cannon. And not only just an ace character but also an Aroace character. And not just that but a seemingly non sex favorable ace character. I would even argue he is sex repulsed.

My real problem with all this is:

Yes, I KNOW ace characters can have sex. But do you know who else can? Literally every single allosexual character. I KNOW aros can date. But you know who else can? Everyone else. The appeal of ACTUALLY having characters with the same sexuality as me is that they would be like me. Cause I and other aces like me never, ever get stories like that. So many times in media I would be enjoying a character who had shown NO interest in sex/romance and would suddenly be partnered up with another just for the heck of it. This has happened SO many times it's not even funny. It's incredibly frustrating.

So, the point I'm trying to make is that; YES, there are aces who have sex. HOWEVER, a large number of us do not. And it's like everyone forgets that. Your not writing Alastor having sex with Angel cause your showing the vast spectrum of asexuality. Your most likely writing it cause it's sex between two hot characters. It's simply maddening.

(One thing I wanted to say was, despite the fact that Al is ace i don't think it's bad to find him attractive. He is very pleasing to look at so I understand allos finding him hot. However I'm not sure where I stand with people sexualizing him. I think I'm leaning towards, 'please don't do it'.)

Now, the worst thing though is when I'm looking for content to enjoy. When I found out Al was canonically ace I was so happy and excited. I'm pretty sure this situation wouldn't make me nearly as frustrated if it weren't for the overwhelming amount of sexual content for Al. Some would be fine. I could just scroll past it if this were the case. But it is not. Content for Al is MOSTLY sexual. That's why I don't believe people when they keep saying they aren't invalidating aces because almost every time I go looking for a fic I have to scroll for HOURS just to find few non ship fics.

I can't even use the Asexual Alastor tag because all that does is bring me to a bunch of fics where the author is like 'he's ace trust me,' then proceeds to write smut.

Why can't I even use a tag made for aces without being drowned in smut. It's so frustrating! Like I'm getting to a point where I wish the authors would stop using the tag and openly admit they made him not ace for the story. Like I know your trying to not throw away his canonical sexuality but I mean at this point I think it'd be better if you did. And if someone is going to write sex favorable ace Al then please leave it to the aces. I trust us to at least weave it into his character instead of stating it and acting like it's there when it's not.

So basically: I don't mind if you ship him, just don't say he's ace or Aroace if your neither of those in ship/smut content. I'm sick of trying to find content that isn't sex/romance in Aroace tags!

I don't want to judge people for liking a ship. But I'm really tired.

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE, I would love to see content with Al and Lucifer. Like them hating each other to like frenemies. It would be so funny.

Anyone have any platonic content with Al and the rest of the cast???

[playgroundeyes]

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

𝓛𝔂𝓻𝓲𝓬𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓭𝓪𝔂:

I don't wanna kill time like it doesn't matter

you chose this instrument yourself

Stop tryna make it seem like you give a shit

you don't have to believe in anything

ASKS ARE OFF FOR THE TIME BEING

FLASH WARNING

GENERAL STUFF

Hi I go by February or Grey online which isn't my real name, my pronouns are he/him but I vibe with xe/xem sometimes too! I'm an Aussie and a leftist! I REALLY LIKE MCR BUT YOU CAN PROBABLY ALREADY TELL THAT I'm an INFJ I think if I remember right and uh yeah I really like my chemical romance <3 I'm also a minor

I have a few killjoy OCs, my first is called Satellite Static

@cobaltfusekilljoy is my side blog about two OCs, Cobalt Fuse and Scorched Skye, please go check it out, it's a story but told in different formats, I put a lot of time into it <3

I'm an avatar of the webtrans and aroace

I also write on Ao3! you can find my acc here ‼️‼️

please please give me attention on there it's the only thing that keeps me alive /nsrs

INTERESTS

- MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE (I actually cannot stress this enough), pre split Panic! at the Disco, BMTH, the young veins, The mechanisms, FOB, Bears in trees, NOAHFINNCE, Green Day and PTV!

- The danger days universe and everything about it omggg

- the true lives of the Fab killjoys comics

- The Umbrella Academy

- stargazing and collecting animal bones!

- UNHOLYVERSE (doesn't really deserve its own category but I love it sm that it does)

- The Magnus archives (CRYING)

- Homestuck! (Haven't finished it yet, no spoilers please)

- Dan and phil

- Stuff I like but you probably won't find here: Stardew valley, minecraft, , hollow knight, pokemon, bluey, Nimona, studio Ghibli, stagtown, ghost eyes, moomin, Lookouts, point and click adventure games, the amazing digital circus, alien stage

HOBBIES

Writing fanfic (not open for reqs), reading, painting/drawing/digital art, listening to music and podcasts, playing video games, going for walks, karate, game design, I play flute and am somewhat learning guitar (maybe saying actively learning is a bit of a stretch)

EXTRA

I can't really think of anything extra to say right now, but if your interests are similar to mine feel free to interact or say hi!!

Also I use tone tags pretty often and appreciate it when others do to but not forced ofc

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

oh wait lastly no I don't ship real people, I respect that they have wives and kids and aren't there for people to be invasive about their entire lives (even if I may make the occasional post that may be very summer of like)

Wait also list of fics I really really love and you should totally read:

- UNHOLYVERSE BY BEXLESS JUST. PLEASE. (mcr)

- Knowledge is Power (But love won't hurt) by SupposedToBeWriting it's quite long but also really fucking good (tma)

- orange and green by to_decay_is_human, it's soooo sweet fnskdjshdhajdhdhdhdhshshsh (danger days)

TAGS

#grey's thoughts - my random af thoughts and posts that I make

#grey's life stuff - like thoughts but just stuff about my life idk

#grey's art :3 - I wanna post art around here more often actually

#grey's saves - mostly for myself just posts that I wanna be able to find quickly

#grey's music!! - bandom and music related stuff

#grey's asks - answering asks

[maoam]

do you think kishimoto writing haku and zabuza's relationship as romantic makes him 'problematic'? i've seen people say that they aren't even written romantically because if you think haku and zabuza loved each other like that it would make kishimoto a creep

Haku definitely had romantic feelings for Zabuza.

I mean this pretty much speaks for itself... He used the word "kirei = beautiful/lovely" in Japanese while blushing on top of it. I could pick up on the vibe of this scene when I was younger already (same with Oro calling Sasuke's face and body beautiful while stroking Anko's face and asking if she's jealous).

I mean this comment pretty much summarizes my thoughts as well. I immediately went "hmm?" even when I was younger. I noticed their relationship is also something many men pick up on.

And what's this... we always talk about the importance of angles, and how Kishi himself said he often redrew pictures and made sure the angles of his drawings were such that they would convey the message. I think everyone can see what I'm referring to here. It looks like an indirect kiss.

On top of that, Zabuza was Haku's precious person he died to protect. Zabuza wished they could go to the same place. I don't see any reason to make Haku's feelings romantic other than for it to be mutual. Something that couldn't be because of the way Zabuza was brought up.

It's not like Japanese mangakas/manga fandoms care about this. They don't see anime characters the same as real people. Which is why they also don't think 15 year old anime character is equivalent to 15 year old real person.

I mean look at CLAMP, one of the biggest franchises, they wrote Syoran/Sakura right? Very sweet puppy love romance. But they also wrote two of Sakura's friends have a love interest with a big age gap. Sakura's brother also dated his teacher in the past and they are later shown to be friends after breaking up. Sakura's father was the teacher of Sakura's mother. Not to mention the stuff in CLAMP's other works that could make its own list. And in Yashahime (which was approved by Rumiko Takahashi) Rin is the mother of Sesshoumaru's twins. And do the Japanese fandoms mind any of this? No. Actually, Japanese fans love Sesshoumaru/Rin, and it's about as popular as Inuyasha/Kagome. Even their voice actors approved of the ship. I mean I don't care about Yashahime, but the ship is generally approved and even the Japanese who don't ship it tended to say it makes sense they ended up together.

Kishi is no different than the general Japanese manga audience or mangakas, instead of being some exception. I actually got an ask about the differences between East asian fandom and American (or western? I think different western countries have different views on this) fandom. I will answer it at some point. Even if it's ages old and I don't even know if the asker even follows me anymore lol.

Here is post by another person (where I also got that comment from)

[gretchensinister]

Daily Fic Highlight: The Doors of Perception

Today's winner of the kudos email is:

The Doors of Perception is a Pitch/Sandy human AU which begins in San Francisco in the 1960s. Perhaps my summary from Ao3 helps introduce it best:

It is the spring of 1967. Sandy is twenty years old, and he would be a sophomore at Berkeley if he was still attending classes. Instead, he is living in an old house in the Haight-Ashbury. He likes it there. He’s found something he’s good at, that people love him for. Sandy is the best trip guide in San Francisco, and everyone who’s turned on knows it.

Kozzy (human Pitch) meets Sandy because he's looking for a trip guide, and thus begins a decades-long romance with more than its fair share of trouble on its way to the HEA. 43,892 words, M, M/M and F/M (Jack/Tooth).

This fic had a few surprising responses to me when it first came out; namely, that some people were wary of reading it because of the drug use. And privately I was like, ? It's psychedelics, that's just good fun and opening your mind, this isn't some sordid DARE scare-piece. But not everyone has 60s counterculture or psychedelics as research interests, right, right.

One of the other surprising responses, which I will be vague about for privacy reasons, was in reply to one certain incident in the story, where I wrote it thinking, "maybe this is unrealistic," and later a reader told me that something very similar had happened to them IRL.

So, I think I did the best I could writing about a lot of years, places, and experiences that aren't directly mine.

Sample:

A couple months ago, rumors had started going around about a new rich kid who had run away to the Haight-Ashbury. He was from old east coast money, they said. Said his last name was Black, but he slipped up once after a few bong hits and turned out it was really Pitchiner. Everyone knew what that meant. Politics. Media conglomerates. Real estate. The people that made The System. So wasn’t it sort of fair, you know, that he just didn’t seem to fit in? The guy didn’t even own a pair of jeans! Black wool pants, black turtleneck, did he think they were all still beatniks? Still, it wasn’t as though no one would let him stay with them. They’d share their space, their food, their acid. Then again, the first time they had done that, it had turned out to be an utter disaster. Pitchiner had freaked out in a major way (“I’m not me anymore! Don’t let me let the black shadows out!”), which had caused everyone else to freak out, and the house he was staying at had used up all the thorazine they had thought they would need for the entire year in order to calm everyone down. This doesn’t deter him, however, from trying again. And again. And again. Eventually someone tells him to go see Sandy if he’s going to be so pigheaded about becoming a psychonaut when it doesn’t even make him feel good, and eventually someone tells Sandy about a guy even he might not even be able to bring to enlightenment.

[kathleenkatmary]

Everything I Ship, in Completely Random Order: Rumplestiltskin/Belle, Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time Once Upon a Time was a show that was full of potential. After its first season it quickly started to squander that potential, but back when it was still creative in the way it used and wove together the fairy tales and their characters, it gave us the episode Skin Deep, wherein we discover that Rumpelstiltskin is also "The Beast" of Beauty and the Beast fame. After taking Belle as payment for helping her people in the Ogre War, the two fell in love. Belle tried to break his curse using True Love's Kiss, and she was almost successful, but the combination of Rumple being too scared to let the power go and not believing that someone could ever love him led him to reject her.

And thus started what was, or at least should have been (but lets be real, even then I'll go with 'was' because it's not like any of the romances on this show were well written) Once Upon a Time's best love story. It gave another interesting layer of depth to Rumpelstiltskin, who, with the revelation of his backstory a few episodes before was already shaping up to be a very interesting character. The backstory we'd seen for him was enough to show us that there was sympathy to be had for the character in his origin, but this made it clear that there was sympathy to had for him as The Dark One, too.

It's one of the best setups for a love story in the entire show. And like the show, it was full of so much potential that was ultimately squandered. There's been a lot of talk over the years as to whether or not the writers ever actually meant for Rumbelle to be a last thing beyond what we got in the first season. Lots of back and forth about whether or not the writers or the actors have confirmed that Emile de Ravin was supposed to be in just one or two episodes, or that Rumbelle wasn't meant to last for the whole series, etc. I don't really care one way or the other, because at the end of the day it really shouldn't matter. It might serve as a cool tidbit, yeah, the whole "this ship was never meant to be a thing but the fans liked it so much that the writers kept them around" thing. But when it comes to how a relationship and the characters are written it absolutely should not matter.

The thing is, though, regardless of whether or not it's actually true, the writers of Once Upon a Time absolutely make it feel like it's true. It not only feels like they were scrabbling to try to figure out how to make it fit with the story and character arc they planned without having to change anything they didn't want to change through pretty much the entire course of the show after season one, it also feels like they really resented that they "had" to. Like the resented the fans for liking the ship so much, like they resented being "made to feel" like they had to keep it around or whatever. I don't know if any of that is actually the case, but it's absolutely how they made it feel.

Which is a shame. Because this is a ship with so much potential. And it is a ship that, even among the painfully repetitive character beats, the nonstop angst and betrayal in favor of interesting storytelling, all the stuff that plagued the ship just as a result of it plaguing the entire show, has some really nice moments. I mean, the set up and potential of this ship, and the performances from Robert Carlyle and Emilie De Ravin, are all so strong that I still consider this one of my favorite ships, even with how badly the show messed it all up. At its core, even with the terrible writing that doomed this relationship, Rumple and Belle is a ship about True Love, about seeing past the surface to the person underneath, about believing in someone, about finding that change is possible, about finding that maybe you aren't as broken as you thought you were.

To be fair to this ship, this is not an issue that effects Rumbelle alone. The problems with Rumbelle are problems that exist throughout the entire show, and there's not a single ship on the show, at least when it comes to ships that are canon in some way, that are not plagued with similar problems, and in some cases worse.

[cloysauce]

The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho

it's not every day your favorite fantasy author writes a novel inspired by your favorite drama.

i've been a fan of @zenaldehyde for 8 years now, so to see her venturing into a romance birthed by crash landing on you itself signals an immediate purchase for me.

[official book website]

going into the novel, it's easy to see why the main characters could pass as au versions of seri and jeong-hyeok, so much that the similarities can be too on the nose. renee goh owns a successful fashion company and in the line of succession of a powerful conglomerate family (from whom she is also estranged), add to that two toxic brothers and a string of exes. yap ket siong is a gifted (tall, broad, gentle, handsome) pianist who is close to his brother. there was a point where i worried too much about parallels but eventually as the world building progresses, the characters would stand on their own merits and unique backstories, and diverge from the cookie dough from whence they have come from.

i imagine it like the author trying to fill in a coloring book, instead of say writing from scratch. but she doesn't necessarily use yellow for the sun or green for the trees or blue for sky. she colors in the scenery in her own way, and in the manner she sees the world and in this case, an intermingling of malaysian, singaporean, and british cultures. this has always been one of her trademarks in her books. she takes something to a different spin like say how she puts Malaysian witches in magical English polite society in Sorcerer to the Crown.

admittedly, i'm very biased for Zen's writing, i love it, it's fun, it's springy, it's colorful. while there's no actual abracadabra magic in this book, she's weaving her spells just the same, in creating sparks between characters. you can trust her to create characters with depth and purpose, like this isn't just about one relationship, but also adult friendships, families, female camaraderie, and many of these rooted to a distinct heritage that me as a southeast asian girl can relate with.

the story is also framed according to real-life events with a touch of fantasy (coz rich people) but the tone and plot perfectly balances between the grim and light (as characteristic of the romance genre). i think it's a balance that's hard to pull off and to justify, but Zen is no stranger to combining two different worlds and making it gel nicely and firmly.

the novel shines its brightest when everything comes together and you chew right into the sweet center. but perhaps as all sweet centers go, it runs out quickly. i'd have wanted to relish it longer.

i've seen some of the mixed reviews and i feel there's something being lost in translation (and possibly marketing?) the book is inspired by the themes, feels, and plot structure of a kdrama, and many of the readers aren't exactly familiar of the genre still. instead they compare it to the first thing people think about when it comes to asians and rich people (yeah that book) which is a rather myopic view imho. that KK book was written with a tabloid sensibility in mind. The Friend Zone Experiment offers so much more to the table (though the title could do much better to communicate that).

but as a kdrama viewer, and a Zen Cho reader, i can say it's a treat for me. will i read it if i were not a kdrama viewer? i'm not sure. but i'm gonna lift a page straight out of cloy and say it's fate that i got to know about this book just when i'm also kneedeep into kdramas.

who will enjoy this? people who liked cloy, people curious about southeast asian affairs and living in diasporic situations, people who love strong women and green flag men, people who want well-written asian characters, people who love a good plot in their romances, and yes, people who love kdramas!

owing to their superior storytelling techniques, kdrama interest is growing and i've been seeing more blogs and readers looking for books with the literary equivalent of watching a kdrama episode. i can recommend this one, especially for the holidays. it's the best time to slurp up a book and feel warm and fuzzy inside.

[byfurries4furries]

The Smoke Room (Horror Western Visual Novel)

So I talked about Arches and Echo, so I might as well talk about their prequel, the Smoke Room. Unlike the other games in the Echo series, aside from the side games, the Smoke Room is primarily made by writers who aren't Howly, who wrote most of Echo and all of Arches and Adastra. In this case, the main writer is GeorgeSquares. Howly did write the prologue and Redd, who's one of the main writers for another VN called Glory Hounds, wrote part of one of the routes, which was eventually partially rewritten by George anyways. There's also more artists working on it than there was for Echo.

In the Smoke Room, you play as Samuel Ayers, a gay prostitute in 1915 in Echo in furry Utah and/or Arizona. Sam falls in love with one of his clients, Jack. Together, the two hatch a scheme to use some hidden away gold in the mines in order to leave Echo and start a new life somewhere else. Jack is, however, tricking Sam and tries to kill Sam in the secluded part of the mine where he pretended there was gold. Sam miraculously survives the murder attempt and ends up killing Jack in self defense. Unfortunately, he's a gay prostitute in 1915, so he knows better than to try and report what Jack did to him and especially the killing. However, several weeks later, somebody drags Jack's body into town and the mine workers riot over the news. When the riot happens, Sam is stuck in the brothel with three potential clients and another on the way, one of which is a miner who saw him the day of Jack's killing and another of whom is the sheriff of the town.

The four clients are:

William Adler: The coyote sheriff who plays by his own rules, specifically the rules that allow him to plow Sam's ass

Nikolai Krol: The badger miner who's a big softie and great cuddler. However, he saw Sam the day of the murder

Clifford Tibbits: The chipper and naïve stoat who's on an anthropology trip to study the nearby furry Navajo

Murdoch Byrnes: The witty fox who happens to be the town's only photographer

The Smoke Room excels in a lot of respects. Its protagonist is very interesting, the branching narrative is very divergent, it's surprisingly historically accurate, and the supporting cast is very filled out. Let's go over each of those. Unlike many VN protagonists, there's practically no attempt to make Sam even resemble a player-insert. He's a prostitute who's simultaneously ashamed of his job and proud of how good he is at it. Even when he's off the clock, he's a very service-minded person with those he cares about and although he's pretty lost and out of his element with most other work, he's very confident and sure of himself when he's providing sexual services. But this also applies to his ability to be a good romantic partner as well. He also knows how to be patient and caring even when he's allowed to take the lead as he's very respectful of other's boundaries when it comes to sex. Unlike most dating sim protagonists, it takes no suspension of disbelief to see why he'd be able to romance so many characters. He's genuinely a great romantic prospect for any of his clients and if he were an option as a love interest himself, he'd probably be quite popular.

The branching narrative is another positive. Every route is extremely different with very few overlapping events. This makes sense as unlike with Echo, the main characters aren't a real friend group yet. Nik sometimes plays poker with Will, Murdoch sometimes does crime scene photography for Will, and Cliff doesn't know anyone at the beginning of the game. The only reason they came together at all is they happened to be trying to book Sam around the same time. Now, depending on the route, they can become closer. Will's route especially works for this, because it's the only route where Sam isn't trying to avoid Will, who's basically the connecting thread for everyone else. However, each route goes in its own direction and has basically its own side cast. Nik's side cast involves his fellow mining union members and his bosses/supervisors as they clash over labor disputes while Nik tries to help find enough gold to get Sam out of Echo. Cliff's side cast involves the expedition crew he acquired and furry Navajo members he meets along the way in his journey to investigate the troubling conditions of the nearby reservation. Murdoch's family as well as his childhood friend make up his side cast along with a star student at the school Murdoch's sisters work at who blackmails Sam into helping her solve the mystery of her classmate's disappearance. And Will's route follows him investigating the mysterious death of Huxley, an abusive drunk with a wife who might have killed him, but the details just don't seem to line up, and that's on top of Will's ex-wife and son moving to Echo without warning. So you can be sure that you won't see any route repeating itself too often.

The historical accuracy is the last point I want to go over, because it does go to a lot of lengths most westerns won't even mention. For example, as was actually the case in the Wild West, brothels are not considered dirty or debased. In fact, the brothel Sam works at, the Saguaro Hip, doubles as a saloon and it's considered an upstanding place for upper middle class families to socialize. Also homosexuality is not THAT frowned upon. It was sorta treated the way marijuana was and still is in some areas. It's illegal for sure and being too brazen about it can get you arrested or beat up depending on the company, but keeping it private would more or less be doable under certain circumstances and letting it slip occasionally isn't the end of the world. Also, it wasn't uncommon for working class guys to be brazen and open about it when not around decent folk, especially in the West. A lot of care was taken to try to accurately depict queerness before WWII.

A positive I want to mention compared to other Echoverse games is that there's no solid expectations of paranormal stuff. The hysteria in Echo is not common knowledge in this era. Murdoch is the only one in the main cast who's lived there long enough to at least know for certain that there's a uniquely high amount of paranormal stuff going on, but even if he does know about the hysteria, it's clear that it's not common knowledge to residents or outsiders, unlike in Echo where there's at least one well known case of it or in Arches where the town is actually famous across the country for at least two cases of it, one of which happened less than a decade ago. And because the routes diverge so much and there's no clear timeline, there's no frame of reference for when it might be coming. The only clear indication is in Nik's route, but you would only know of that if you played the prologue of Echo AND connected the clues set up by the inaccurate summary of the events of the Smoke Room within the prologue of Echo. Otherwise, all bets are off and there's no telling when it will happen, which is further helped by the fact that unlike Echo, the Smoke Room doesn't keep explicit track of days and isn't afraid to do timeskips that throw off the chronology of events.

Although the Smoke Room is not really that close to complete (it's suspected with pretty good evidence that it's barely halfway done), I do highly recommend it. It is however the first VN I've recommended that really isn't close to a satisfying pausing point for any of the routes. If you have a high tolerance for incomplete visual novels, I'd say it's definitely worth the cost, even though it's free. If not, just check out other games in this series like Echo and Arches. Until next time, keep on yiffing.

Links

itch.io

[hpowellsmith]

Yooo I’ve been following you since the beginning of crème de la creme. So proud of you to have more hard work published! Love the characters and world building. Asher my beloved. ❤️ And having Beaumont as a socially awkward bestie is the best. Also went back and played cdlc and I romanced Freddie the first play through ages back and thought I’d go for someone else this time around… HARTMANN my darling. My poor overstressd boy. He needs a solid five minute hug and 2 weeks of exactly no schoolwork and sleeping in every day. But I did manage to salvage my family’s reputation this go around. So that was fun.

But I had a question about the world building and the time period. It feels like it’s got a 1920’s sorta vibe by the technology? Or am I reading that wrong?

Ahhhh that's so wonderful, thank you so much - it feels so long since Crème de la Crème came out and I'm so pleased you enjoyed going back to it!

Someone else asked about setting timeframe on reddit - here's roughly what I said to them:

I play pretty fast and loose with technology - it's nice to have the freedom to do so when not writing something strictly historical! - but I tend to use 1930 as a very general guide for the upper limits of tech development unless I have particular reason to pick something from later in real-world history. The atmosphere is a bit of a mishmash of Edwardian and 1920s Europe, though as there isn't an equivalent of World War I for Westerlin and its neighbours, it's not an exact match by any means.

Gallatin has one telephone (this sort of thing) which you can use in Creme in some paths, as does Archambault, but phones aren't in most households outside of the upper class. Some businesses will have one, or there are also public ones - there might be one in a workers' club or post office, for example. (There are probably telegrams, though it's not something I've ended up mentioning yet.) There are cars/buses/taxis in Fenburg, though in most places it's a mix between them and horse-drawn carriages. Having your own car for recreational driving is more of a fancy thing, although more modern/prosperous farmers would have tractors and pickup trucks. Gallatin town is a bit rural and old-fashioned for many people to have cars, and the mountain roads don't make for great car-driving conditions, so horse-drawn coaches (and wagons/horses-and-carts) are used more often there.

The Royal Affairs MC and their family's lifestyle means they have access to a lot that others don't: the aeroplane (I picture something in the realm of this) is definitely an outlier, and would be rare even among the upper echelons! Cars are also getting a bit more common as it's a few years after Creme.

It's been really interesting thinking about how things will shift over time, because what I'm working on now will take place a few years after Royal Affairs - putting it nearly 10 years after Creme. Especially writing about a different country where developments have taken place at different times and in different ways, and writing about more modern (for the Creme setting) environments whereas Gallatin College, Archambault Academy, Teteriuk Manor, and the royal palace/Vossau/Staheli/the parliamentary buildings are centuries old. (Westerlin/Zaledo/Teran futuristic space race anyone?!)

[onewomancitadel]

I had a hell of a time the other day and I ended up reading some slashfic out of distraction and honestly I've come back around to being an apologist to it... it was very interesting because the characters were really psychologically small, the question of misogyny which normally infuses hetfic was totally absent (by virtue of what it is) but even the question of gender was relatively minimal, a lot of it was sexless and when it was sexy it was weirdly - juvenile? - genuinely like smushing Barbie dolls together. I almost feel like the word I'd use to describe it all was 'innocent'; it was innocent psychologically, socially, sexually, in narrative consequences.

It's interesting because the much-maligned fujoshi - even I have partaken in the sport - is usually termed as an oversexed A/B/O nightmare busy getting men pregnant. And it's true that they exist, but in their own way I kind of find them quaint: the sex they always have is outlandishly perfect and bereft of all psychological complexity. Even pregnancy, in this case, is turned into something even if difficult, always beautiful and nongendered, not the experience it is in the real world (even hetfic at its happiest is not ignorant of the implicit place pregnancy has cultually).

I find the angle of psychological simplicity a surprise because the way it is normally termed is that male characters are capable of psychological complexity women lack (or lack in writing). Whereas I think the thesis is actually kind of the opposite: it can be simple because it is not painful. There's something existentially deeper here which is that I think what we find is that we believe the other gender(s) has it easier; existential meaning is located along the border of it. It's very human. Simplicity seems desirable. (It's not to devalue feminist analysis in any way).

And I think that this generally speaks to the issue that I have with a lot of storytelling atittudes - the desire to escape that complexity - for people who really do just seek out storytelling as an avenue for fluffy pleasure. For me, the idea that the full spectrum of human experience is elided from something very fully, deeply human - literally narrating someone's perspective of the world - is essentially existential horror to me, the worst of all kinds of horror. I don't think this is an issue found simply along slashfic/hetfic lines (and indeed femslash, for similar reasons), but is more apparent in slashfic just because it really offers the optimum escapist experience.

There are surely exceptions, but you find this in the genre of whumpfic; even that sort of melodramatic pain is played out in a nearly childish, thumping-the-toys way. You'll notice that I've pretty much ignored the question of sexuality - it's beyond the purview of this post, but also because I don't think it's really that straightforward. And there is slashfic which isn't 'childish', to be sure; there's a difference between simplicity and childishness, and I think you can surely make the case that this applies to the mainstream romance genre. The two have a lot in common.

But the thing I find valuable here is that there is something essential, maybe even deeper than any other argument put forward about why slashfic draws such an overwhelming audience, to be found here.

The most valuable thing to me was considering that it is not about male characters being more complex than female characters - it's the exact opposite. What they profess, I think, is not true, and to take it at face value - that male characters (with one line? With none?) are simply universally better written than women as a consequence of nebulous misogyny which can simply not be contended with - is a grave error I've made in the past. I would dispute that complex female characters scare people; not that they can't understand them, but that it is precisely the sort of thing a lot of people really aren't looking for. It's not safe, it's not comforting, it's not reassuring. And this crosses over with all the people afraid of conflict, afraid of any narrative complexity whatsoever. The issue was not, as it happens, poorly written women.

[bijoumikhawal]

Part of the problem with MLM fetishization discourse (mainly found onTwitter, but i see it here too), is that people see effeminacy and femininity in men itself as a fetish, and therefore can't be assed to understand actual issues we face with regard to sexuality

It's impossible to talk about fatphobia, underlying assumptions often related to white supremacist beauty standards, adultification, ageism, etc that feminine men experience because people are too busy getting in a tizzy over a guy wearing skirts in media. One of the big issues for me is hypersexualization- I was getting sexualized at a very young age for being what I am, it's a big issue historically, and a lot of media I could access when I was younger was basically just porn/erotica. And that porn/erotica was often like. Racist, it hypermasculinzed Blackness in comparison to white effeminates, and it only portrayed fem men as submissive bottoms (which isn't itself bad) whose effeminacy was humiliation, and submission was bc they're worth less than "real men"

And like, the joke is people are so focused on wether or not people writing femmes who bottom is bad (it's just a thing that happens irl) that you can't talk about anything else. It's also a form of hypersexualization. The only other thing ppl wanna discuss is "heteronormativity". Fiction where femmes are fucking isn't a bad thing with that being said, and desexualizing us is also a common homophobic thing to do, and tends to loop back to the "less than a real man" thing.

And like, "yaoi"/"BL" isn't the big driving factor in hypersexualization here. If nobody in the US knew what that was I still would've been getting hit on by men twice my age at 16 (who sometimes would loudly advertise their interest in femmes specifically, or more accurately, "femboys" and "tr*ps").

And honestly when you deal with just like- grown ass men looking at you that way, people moaning and bitching that the big concern for fetishization here is basically wether or not the character exists only deepens the shame felt from those interactions. I was made to feel uncomfortable and gross because my gender presentation was seen as sexual when I was a teenager, and all this shit does is go "yeah, it is sexual, when I look at people like you I think about sex and how the sex you have is bad". And part of my Ick with portrayals of femmes is that we're assumed as submissive bottoms because I'm not, but this is still deeply harmful to people that are because you're telling queers the way they fuck is morally wrong and you're instilling shame over it.

And like... actual fetishization for me is more often when femmes as objects of sexual desire are seen that way through a lens of "you're a faggot so you're beneath me, you should thank me when I call you slurs and do xyz, you're trash, shaving you so you have less body hair (so you look more feminine) is a punishment and symbolizes my superiority" because it's just intracommunity femmephobia/effemiphobia with a boner.

Its not that other things are non-issues but cis women clumsily writing a masc/femme dynamic is probably more likely to make me laugh than feel ashamed or disgusted, and instances of feminizing a character for bigotry reasons in fandom are less common than people complaining about effeminacy existing at all (including with femme transmasc characters, especially because usually those aren't being written by cis people). The actual things that have made me cringe with shame and disgust about cis women's view of feminine and effeminate men sexually are more difficult for me to unsnarl because I see it less often, and it's sometimes more visceral because while I was sexualized by men I was actually abused by women, but I'll be frank; those things usually aren't occurring in discussions about fandom.

When I get disgusted in fandom discussion isn't about femme characters existing at all, or top/bottom/switch- they're about people acting like writing romance/erotica about men fucking is the sacred right of cis women and any discussion about equity in publishing means you're attacking fandom when they're two different things, and that that right is more important than the fact that queer men can struggle to get published in romance- and subsequent issues with poverty. Or the insistence that to be fetishized you need to be a woman because fetishization is stored in the pussy (revealing they haven't thought about racism in the romance genre, and don't think about trans women). Its about queer men in fandom writing smut and getting harassed by women who write the exact same type of it because the way they do it is somehow bad. It's about my sexuality being seen as piece of land to fight over, that I'm not supposed to be on, not writing about men in fishnets.

[hp-confessions]

For those concerned about fictional age gaps and how it affects morals. First of all, it's not. Fiction is a healthy way to explore your thoughts, emotions, trauma or simply entertainment without hurting anyone. If something is written in fiction, it doesn’t automatically mean it's morally correct to do the same in real life. No one says that, ever. Please, exercise critical thinking. People take from fiction what they take, they don't use it as their gospel to blindly justify something in reality. If they do, they are wrong and should be judged by the acts actually committed, not by the cloud in their head that is basically a playground.

Second of all, half of the characters in darker "problematic" ships are also murderers and otherwise criminals, how does none of it is confusing, but their preferred romance is? Oh, maybe because you actually understand people don't condone murder in real life or are secret serial killers if they write about those topics? At least, I would hope so. The same distinction applies to everything else.

As for the age gap and the appeal of it. Personally, it's never the main reason for me to like the ship, but just a factor. I see characters and their dynamic, not the age they're assigned in a story. But also, characters aren't perpetual children, they can age too and become adults. The age gap in itself is not the issue most of the time.

Besides, when someone is immortal such trivialities as age transcend time. The trope of 100 year old vampire and a teenage girl has been around for centuries. It even has popular modern examples somehow widely accepted. Tripping over imaginary age gaps is so unnecessary. So what if there are decades between characters? Can they interact in an interesting way? Let them interact and just have fun!

As for reading romance about literal kids, I already somewhat answered it with a passage about other crimes. You can draw the parallels. Most of the time, such stories exist simply because they can. Exploration of taboo topics will always have its appeal in one way or another.

I can't say for everyone, but for me mostly, it's about the scenarios characters are put through, not the fact itself they're children. If they happen to be young, so what? As long as it works for the story to highlight or explore something in that exact period of time in character's life, so be it.

And you can't just label everything as problematic just because it has some problems. Sometimes, that's the point. Fiction has always been a way to highlight problems in society, to bring attention to them, to let readers draw their own conclusions. It's never been a free pass for moral justification that people nowadays try to make out of it. Sometimes, it's the opposite, and the story would tell you how those things are wrong. But it's for the reader to decide, not for the author to spoon feed them. I'm sorry, but if someone uses books to copy everything they read without any careful or critical thought, they probably shouldn't be reading books at all.

~

[understandableparadox]

bottom of the barrel isekai review #3

Todays review: Choose your heros carefully

two BLs in a row... i would make a gay joke at my own expense but i'll be real, gay trash is soooo much more palatable as a whole then straight trash and i'm confident enough in whatever nebulous concept i've adopted as my sexuality to say that with something resembling pride.

so what's on the chopping block? utterly psychotic middle aged men reincarnated in a world ripe for their exploitation? perhaps a swarm of hyper busty vixens parading about on the strings of someone who has no idea how to utilize them? a magic system based on some mmo where its way to clear the author was bullied in or vaguely believed a certain class should be the strongest?

SUPRISIE! WE ARENT EVEN LOOKING AT TRASH TODAY YOU UTTER HEATHENS, WE ARE LOOKING AT SOMETHING VAGUELY COOL, I FUCKING TRICKED YOU, WE AREN'T AT THE DUMPSTERS WE ARE AT THE FARMERS MARKET AND WERE HITTING THE ANTIQUE STORE, GENDER AMBIGUOUS PARENTAL FIGURE WANTS TO PICK UP SOME VINTAGE COOKWARE TO SPICE UP THE GODDAMN KITCHEN

Ramblings aside, my established format usually stats that we have a short opening related to the title then a not so brief summation of the story, but this time the summation of the story will in fact be nothing more than a summation, as I genuinely think you should go ahead and read through this title.

our titular hero shane has been bullied by his friend to play test his beta for a gacha game

a game in which you use magical stones to revive ancient heroes and command them to destroy a collection of horrors from some demonic realm.

shane awakens after a long day of Gameing and finds that he is now stuck within this world, a magical divine sheep provides him after some prodding some game functions, along with a single stone to summon his first hero. from there, the trio set off to solve the darkness of the world and find a way to return back to whence they came. solveing the other mysteries and oddities the world holds for them.

and that's it, you ain't gonna learn a single thing more about this story from me, get the fuck out of my house...

well i'm not done yet and a little bit of this will be spoilers.

ok so why do I like this? the action is bad, the art isn't anything to write home about, the armor and weapon design makes me want to curl up in a small hole, bury me gentle please...

Well as i think i've said prior, A lot of things can be hidden if you have enough meat on the bones of it, to the point where i can ignore the guts of it being playdough and the skin being saran wrap you splashed paint over.

the story itself is overwhelmingly interested in how a world that functions through mmo and gacha logic would work. what happens when you can summon someone who is truly the pinnacle of humanity through shear luck? what about the common rabble that are only lucky enough to be able to afford one pull and end up getting some D grade shitterton, Bob the Spackle artist, special skill Crack Spackle.

what about the fact that you can just tell them to attack things and you can take a nap in the middle of a low grade dungeon? the concept of auto play but introduced to the idea of the world at large.

now lets pull out form smaller game concepts, the heroes are the only ones that can defeat the shadows, and only the summoner can control the heros. meaning that the heroes can only be as heroic as the summoner. a brave man shackled by those who even the gods have abandoned.

what about the towns in games that dont have the right vendors? the ones that cannot give the player things they want, the areas without bazaars or weapon shops or summoning areas or shop functions, what happens to them if they have no draw to keep players in them?

these are the questions that the manhwa loves to explore and I love exploring them with it. now, on to our normal questions.

"Is the underlying story, barring any other concept, good?"

Yes, its both a compelling romance with both the main character and the main love interest being good fits for each other with interesting flaws and qualities. they are not perfect and that makes them fun to follow. even without the romance the story has enough aspects for you to follow if you want to ignore the twinks prancing around.

 "on a sliding scale of min to max, how much is the author using this to explore fetish" 

0, big goose egg. unless the author has a fetish for being held in their sleep then yeah i guess thats a thing.

"How many story crutches does the author use to explore the story" 

I cant exactly see any noteworthy crutches, even the normal "game aspects" thing is something they have to specifically work towards within the story.

 "Is the author attempting to use the story as a way to explain why he is not weird."

they are trying to say that gachas are bad and I for one believe they should say it fucking louder for the rest of the world to hear.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am now going to be taking isekai requests to review on top of the ones I have set aside for myself to review. to submit an isekai, please send it to me as an ask with the site where I can read through it.

[arealphrooblem]

Could you answer 20 and 13? Thanks!

20. Do you have one piece of advice for your fellow writers?

So I am not saying that I'm not guilty of the thing I'm about to advise against, but I will say thinking this way has influenced my writing more than anything else.

Subtly.

We get so attached to a certain aspects of our stories and the interpretation of them that we have an instinct to go overboard and make sure the reader really understands what we want them to understand. We put huge flashing neon signs telling the readers "these two characters love each other" or "this guy cannot be trusted" or "this item/scene is a super important symbol of change and growth for the character." or whatever.

But stories are so much better when you're subtle about it. You have to trust that your reader will pick up on it. Even if it's not the first time, it's so much fun to re-read an old favorite and have new realizations. If you've ever read a Megan Whalen Turner book, you will know this intimately lol.

Readers also like puzzling things out for themselves and picking up on these hints and you're robbing them of that opportunity.

But mostly, it always felt to me that if you have to have the flashing neon signs, then what you want to point out isn't true. If you can't show the character's relationship to each other in subtle consistent ways and its always flashy gestures and intimate confessions then it doesn't feel real. It feels like you're overcompensating the fact that it's not well developed.

13. What feedback did you receive for your writing that stuck with you?

There was a reader I had on my fanfic account/tumblr who said once that she would really dislike my OC if she had met them in real life. But the OC was compelling and interesting and empathetic and she couldn't help but love the character anyway.

She was so afraid I would take it as an insult, but I was super flattered that she loved and supported and was fascinated by a character that was so different than what she was used to and that my writing could break through the pet peeves she had about certain kinds of people and make my character feel so real and well rounded that they went beyond the stereotype of the kind of people she found annoying IRL.

It also taught me that if a character feels real, if they aren't just a cardboard cut out there to serve the goals of the story, or a chalk outline of a person in a romance, that people love and are fascinated by them. They don't have to be perfect or bland or inoffensive or above reproach. The best loved characters are the ones that feel like a real person despite the very unreal and insane plots they get thrown in.

[aribaran]

Hey, I was curious about the world building of your hockey series and why you decided to have women in the NHL and keep the enforcer role as something a lot more common than today's NHL?

the short answer is those are the stories i wanted to tell and the awesome thing about writing your own book is you can basically write whatever you want as long as a publisher is willing to buy it, haha.

the longer answer, at least for bee, is that i do think that there are women who are incredibly talented and that it could be a possibility one day and i enjoy thinking about what that would look like. when you look at players like marie philip-poulin or even nela lopušanová, both of whom are such smart and ridiculously talented women, you wonder how it would go for them in a men's league. relatively tiny guys have long careers all of the time, why not imagine a woman playing in the pro leagues? there aren't actually rules prohibiting them from playing.

i originally started writing the series with bee as the heroine of the first book, because i thought it was a really interesting story, like how would she deal with being one of the most talented people in a room at any given time, but still have to constantly bite her tongue because she was aware how precarious her position was and how the dream could be yanked away at any moment. a large part of her internal drama in her book was not wanting to be a distraction in the locker room/feeling like she couldn't have a relationship with sakari because it could jeopardize her spot on the team/etc but ultimately deciding she could have hockey AND someone who loved her too.

for various reasons, i wasn't able to finish that book (not the least of which an author friend of mine convinced me that as a debut author it would be easier to sell a series that wasn't mixed het and queer relationships and she was right :\) but i liked bee as a character too much to cut her out or rewrite her as a man. from what i can see with the reviews, she is somewhat polarizing. people seem to either really like her or completely hate her. 🤷🏻 i don't regret leaving her in though. i think she's a very fun character to write and i love her friendship with mike so much.

for bee's arc, too, the way she integrates into the team and is a huge reason for their success was also really satisfying for me to write. i like to envision a league that may still have its issues with racism and sexism and homophobia, but ultimately, has the possibility of being more inclusive and accepting. and that's something i'm ideally going to be able to explore in later books but idk how many i'll get, so!

as for the enforcers, i don't think danny or mike are really old school enforcers in the sense that they're completely useless on the ice for anything except fighting. they have contemporary analogues: for example, i see danny as more of a ryan reaves or a nicolas deslauriers type of guy. he may not have the TOI of a top four d-man (yes i know the other two are forwards but it's the general principle), but he's not a total liability when he's out there. there's more fighting in the book than there is in real life, again for drama's sake, but i'll put it this way, des had 136 PIM last season, and a good amount of those were fights. it's not as uncommon as you'd really like to think (or maybe just me being forced to watch the flyers so much...it wasn't as uncommon, rip). and let's not kid ourselves about why guys like reaves and des are both constantly in demand, even if they may not be the most talented players.

if you're interested i have a longer post on my substack about both danny and mike's character arcs and why i wrote them the way i did, including the sources i used. basically my books are romances, but i am someone who is deeply interested in hockey culture and history, so the books are love stories, but they are also avenues for me to interrogate the kind of fucked up aspects of hockey culture. for danny and mike, that was the culture of fighting, playing through pain and ignoring your mental health, the intense and crushing toxic masculinity these men are subjected to from the time they are little kids to the time they are forced to retire. i am doing this too in delay of game, but the focus is on anxiety disorders and body dysmorphia (and the kind of fucked up way that hockey people have of talking about hockey players' bodies).

hopefully that helped answer your question!